Long Time Friends Discuss Cases From Their Former Home Town

I'm Raven Rollins and my cohost is Holly Archer. Our podcast name, Sirens, came to us because we are both (my cohost and I) somewhat mystical. We are both musically inclined and found that the correlation between sirens in mythology (female voices) and our first responder ties with our true crime podcast fit all to perfectly.

Our backgrounds: I was a legal assistant for many years who decided to become an EMT. While I never worked on the ambulance, I took that training and worked as a 9-1-1 dispatcher for 2 years. I have also worked as a veterinary assistant, a surgical assistant, a home health nurse, and I'm not studying to become a private investigator. Holly gets her insider experience that pertinent to our podcast by working in a DNA lab. Combine all of that experience with family that are police, paramedics, lawyers, and more, you get a pretty nice bundle of information in our episodes. Our background together also consists of very long friendships between not only us, but our mothers as well. They have been very good friends since around the 8th grade, and we have basically grown up together, went to school together, and so on, but we found how much we have in common - both in the way we think and the way we feel with compassion and empathy - to be so abundant that we decided we wanted to work together for a common good and goal in a podcast.

Sirens | A True Crime Podcast, and it's about true crime! We are both from Ada, Oklahoma. You have probably seen it in the headlines a few times. Blake Shelton is from Ada, but the Innocent Man by John Grisham also happened there. There was so much more to town: corruption, murder, but also compassionate people who have lost loved ones. People see these things in the headlines, but don't realize how deep the ties bind, how many officers, prosecutors, and families are all interconnected with not just these crimes, but so many more. Cold cases, criminal families, domestic violence. We started this podcast with the hopes of shining a light on the dark side our otherwise seemingly Pleasantville type of town and it's grown from there. Our goal is to to talk about true crime as locally as possible when we can, but also provide resources to our listeners. We provide information about local shelters, break down laws, explain legal terms, and let them know where they can go to find help or information they may not otherwise know about.

Our listeners are moms, sisters, dads, brothers, aunts, and sons - most of them having lost a loved one in similar ways as some of the victims we talk about, or knew them. They are teachers, nurses, paramedics, detectives, lawyers, and investigative journalists. A huge majority of them are women, which is why we promote vigilance in our episodes in knowing what to do when the unthinkable happens.

I had a family member who was murdered a year ago. Holly has experienced the same in her friendships. We began talking about all the things 'true crime' that had happened in our own lives and decided that we should start a podcast to let people know that there are podcasters out there who has been hit very close to home instead of just talk about it, to let listeners know they aren't alone.

Holly listens to a lot of them, I prefer TV documentaries. I barely knew what a podcast was when we started this.

Awareness, vigilance, outreach, and providing resources for our listeners.

We started our podcast on Halloween 2019!

I already had familiarity with audio editing from my music, so it took less than a day to get out first episode up and running. If I hadn't had that experience, it may have taken way longer.

The funding is simple. We have non. Every source we use, from hosting platform to recording and editing software is free. It's the time that is precious. We have one day a week put aside for research and recording, and I have another day put aside for editing, promoting, and other technical stuff.

On average, we record for 1-3 hours every Thursday night. The editing (to my standards) and putting together an episode to completion (including episode graphics) takes about 8-12 hours. Social promotions and episode release I set up all at once for scheduled posting and publishing, which takes me about an hour a week. I fund anything we may need, like a subscription to canva for graphics, etc.

We take sponsorships from Anchor.fm, and sometimes those are non-profit things that we care about, so they aren't paid. For the most part, right now, we don't make any money off our podcast, but regardless, we are getting about 500 listens/downloads a week right now. We hope that we may have sponsorships in the future and can be heard by a larger audience.

Benefits? Getting our thoughts off our chest for the most part! But getting to let listeners know things they may not know otherwise is a pretty sweet deal. We have already had a couple leads in a cold case we spoke about, so that's pretty awesome.

I use a MSI GF63 Thin 95C for everything. Recording, editing, graphics, etc. I have a studio set up in and use a Maono AO4 Plus Cardioid Condenser USB Podcast microphone with a pop filter, as well as Zencaster for recording with my cohost (as she lives in a separate state than I do) and guests as well. She has a similar studio set up, but uses a Macbook Pro.

For less technically inclined guests, I don't mind doing in person interviews with a handheld recorder. For editing, I use Audacity. For hosting and putting together the episode I use Anchor.fm - and I swear by everything I have mentioned!

A lot of the people we interview find us, but this is where we have to be an amature investigative journalist so we know who we should talk to about certain things.

Preparing the episode: after editing, I upload everything into Anchor. There, I can put segments together and add background music. I have a saved intro segment, social media segment, and outro segment that I use every time. I put those around the bulk of the new episode. It's simple as that!

We promote our social media in our podcast, and we promote our podcast on social media. We do have listener acquisition sources, which Anchor provides for us, so we know which platforms will get the most plays/downloads. When we promote on social, we usually use those links in lue of the others for new listeners to potentially find.

I find Facebook's Creator Studio to be a rockstar here. It has integration with Instagram, and allows me to schedule posts to each, as well as create more in depth posts. We also use Mail Chimp for monthly newsletters. We use Blogger as our website. I find the blog style allows us to post new episode details with photos and cite our sources instead of saying them all in our episodes. We have FB, IG, Twitter, and Tumblr, as well as a dedicated podcast email address. We also utilize business cards for potential listeners, guests, interviews, and sponsors.

There are effects in Audacity you should be utilizing, don't just cut out the coughs and move on! There are so many Youtubers that have helped with learn on the fly and you can definitely hear the difference in episode 101 versus our most recent. Use youtube and any other free resources you can!

Take your time, your listeners can wait. It's better to have everything just the way you like it and want it then you have to go back and edit it later, it's a pain, believe me!

Podcasting for Dummies book. Read it!

Our website is thesirenspodcast.blogspot.com where you can listen, donate, and more. @thesirenspodcast on Facebook, thesirenspodcast@gmail.com